“Unleashed and Other Poems” by Thomas R. Moore; Moon Pie Press, Westbrook, Maine, 2024; 76 pages, paperback, $15.

I’ll just say straight up that Tom Moore is one of my favorite poets writing today. So it was spice on the day to find a copy of his latest collection in my mailbox awhile back.

“Unleashed,” similar to several of his other books, takes us on page-long journeys around his garden and neighborhood in Belfast; into incidents, memories and dreams that sometimes bleed into each other; intrusions of the world at large into these scenarios; and from time to time into wry observations on what it’s like to write poetry, and get it published.

His poems are distinguished by their sharp precision of language and accessibility, meaning there is no lack of complexity but also little difficulty following a poem’s literal meaning. There is consistently in his poetry an emotional impact of a clarity unusual in our age. And it’s all given with persistent good humor; even painful poems find ways of eliciting ironic or wistful smiles, often with a knifelike simile.

The possibly most memorable poem for me is “Squabble,” appearing in the first section of the book, titled “A Plague of Grackles” (which has to be an allusion to his wife Leslie Moore’s recent book “Grackledom”). It’s among several poems that take us on dream and daydream journeys, this one illuminating the Belfast seascape. I’ll quote the whole thing because it illustrates not only the precision of language, but also the book’s pervasive good humor:

Jacket in June—it’s chilly this morning.

Three gulls and two crows discuss ownership

of a morsel on the rocks until one gull flies

off trailing the squabble of fish innards.

A northeast breeze sidles into me. Blue Hill

is blanketed under the gray horizon. The summer

folk are still asleep or eating scones from

the Scone Goddess. I climb wooden steps

into an empty yard overgrown by Japanese

knotweed, turn, then skim out above the beach

following the gull dangling fishy entrails.

Two more gulls join me. We bank and land

on the float by the condominiums, then tug

against each other to tear apart the fleshy

strip of mackerel. While we enjoy the slithery

snack, one of the crows swoops low over

us yawping a string of curses. Turtle Head

pokes through the mist. They ask if I’d

like to follow the lobster boat pulling traps

off Bayside and I say, Let’s go for it.

That last line makes me laugh every time I read it, like so many of Tom Moore’s poems. On his recurrent topic of writing, “On Publishing a Book of Poems” goes, in full:

Expectations creep warily

beneath tarpaulins. Critics

and friends take

vows of silence

as poems baffle,

wound, or bore—

like a bell

without a clapper,

a corpse’s snore.

The wryness of the description of what it feels like to be ignored comes through crystal clear, and the closing similes carry not only the dead frustration of it, but the good humor it takes to endure it. So many of us have been exactly here with our own projects.

But we keep on because poets like Tom Moore make it seem easy. When you feel that while reading—“Hey, I could do this too”—you know you’re in the presence of a very good poet. And the moment you realize that, you also have to admit that well, no you probably couldn’t. Tom Moore writes some of the most entertaining, authentic poetry in Maine today.

Moore retired from teaching at Maine Maritime Academy in 2006, served as poet laureate <https://www.islandinstitute.org/working-waterfront/tom-moore-and-the-midcoast-school-of-wheelbarrow-poetry/> of Belfast from 2017-18, and is the author of five other collections of poems, including “Stones” and “The Bolt-Cutters.”

“Unleashed” is available online at https://tmoore419.wixsite.com/poet.

Off Radar takes note of poetry and books with Maine connections the first Friday of each month. Contact Dana Wilde at dwilde.offradar@gmail.com.